


Mother and Son

by pupeez4eva



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide attempt, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mother-Son Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-14 01:09:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14759724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pupeez4eva/pseuds/pupeez4eva
Summary: Aaron and Chas over the years.





	Mother and Son

The happier memories of his earlier years of childhood soon fade away after his mum leaves. He still remembers better times, that trip to the beach with his mum standing out in the forefront in his mind, but after she leaves and everything gets worse, he has far more important things to worry about. It’s not like he particularly wants to hang onto those memories; they just leave him feeling bitter about the life he’d lost.

 

His mum is the most important person in his life. Then she's gone, and missing her leads to one of the worst moments of his life — the moment that everything changes, when the father he’d known is lost to him for good, and nothing seems to make sense anymore — and all he can bring himself to feel for his mum is anger and hurt.

 

He tries not to think about her. Missing her and caused nothing but problems, and Dad seems to go back to normal after that awful night, so Aaron thinks he’s doing something right.

 

Then Sandra comes along, and he feels like this may be his second chance. Sandra was kind, and lovely, and everything he’d once thought his mum was before he’d learnt better. Dad seems happier around her too. 

 

They get married. Sandra gets pregnant. 

 

Mum says awful things to him, tells him he’ll be forgotten when the baby comes along. He yells back, thinks, _‘You’re wrong,’_ when really all he can feel is fear because he _knows_ it’s true.

 

Liv is born and before the year is over, Dad does it again. Sandra had left him, taken Liv with her for the night, and Aaron realises that whatever hopes for a family he’d had were nothing more than a stupid fantasy. 

 

He wonders what mum would say if she knew, and then decides that she wouldn’t care, so long as he was out of her hair.

 

Time passes. Dad kicks him out of home, something he’d never thought would happen — no matter how bad things got, no matter how awful he felt whenever Dad punished him, Dad had always said it was the two of them against the world, and Aaron had always believed him. Now Dad doesn’t want him, and Sandra doesn’t want him, and even Liv would probably forget him after long.

 

All he had now was his mum, an that was the biggest joke of all. He’d be better of alone. 

 

He hates her. At least that’s what he tells himself, over and over, until he thinks he can actually believe it. It’s better than focusing on that small glimmer of hope he has that maybe things will be different this time, and maybe she’ll be a mum to him, if only because she has no other choice.

 

Paddy comes into the picture, and for a while things are better than they’ve been in years. Aaron doesn’t trust her, doesn’t know if he ever will, but he’s _happy._ Then she goes and cheats on Paddy with Carl King of all people, and she chooses Carl over him, and Aaron wonders if he’d ever expect her to do anything else. This is what she does — disappoints him. Lets him think things are going to get better, lets him be _happy,_ and then brings everything crashing down. 

 

He wonders if she hates him. In moments like these, it’s easy to believe that she does.

 

He tries to stay away from her. Paddy lets him stay, is more wonderful to him than Aaron could ever deserve, and he wants her far away from this. If he lets her in again she’ll ruin everything, just like she always does, and he’s not ready to lose this.

 

She tries to reach out. Makes it seem like she wants to have a relationship with him. He doesn’t believe her.

 

Things get bad again. Then they’re worse than bad, and Aaron sometimes feels like he’s choking. It starts with Adam Barton, and feelings that he’d tried to ignore for years are dredged up. He’d thought he’d long since buried this — had almost fell _proud_ of himself after Victoria — and then Adam Barton swans into town, making Aaron feel the sort of things he only ever felt towards the wrong people.

 

He makes the mistake of getting too close — almost _kisses_ Adam — and then everything goes to shit. Adam starts telling people, first Holly, then his parents, and then suddenly more people know. Cain is cracking jokes when he shows up at work, and that’s what they all think — that it’s just a big joke. No one would ever think he was like _that_ , and even though he should have been relieved, it just makes him feel like he wants to crawl out his skin disappear.

 

Everything falls apart, and he hates himself. He hates himself even more when he hurts Paddy, and even more when he meets Jackson, and finds himself wanting to see him again, even though he _knows_ what it will do to him if anyone found out.

 

Paddy learns the truth, and he accepts him for it. Aaron can’t bring himself to care, not when all he can focus on is the sheer terror of other people finding out. He wonders how mum would react, and the mere thought makes him feel sick. He steers clear of that idea. He doesn’t think he could face the world if she finds out.

 

Then he punches Jackson, and Paddy tells Mum, and Aaron realises what an astute prediction that was. Shortly after he sits in a car in the garage, breathing in fumes and feeling more at peace that he’d felt in a long time.

 

He wakes up in hospital and Mum is the first thing he sees. The first thing he feels is a flood of disappointment, and he supposes that these go hand in hand together.

 

He wants to die. He thinks about it, over and over again as he lies in that bed. He thinks about other things too — like what everyone out there is saying about him, whether they know, whether Paddy, or his mum, or Adam or Marlon have gone and blabbed to everyone. It makes him feel sick. It makes him hate himself even more.

 

He tells Paddy and his mum that his feelings haven’t changed. That he still wants to die. He’s not sure why. Maybe he thinks they’ll finally leave him alone if he pushes them enough. Surely everyone has their limits? At the very least, his mum won’t be sticking around. She never has before, and once she gets over the shock, or the guilt, or whatever’s been keeping her around this long, she’ll be running back into Carl King’s arms, and he’ll be left alone again.

 

Except she doesn’t leave. She’s there by his side everyday, and she’s brash, and forceful, and doesn’t hold back her thoughts in the way that everyone else seems to be doing. He thinks, _‘You just feel guilty.’_ He thinks, _‘You’ll get bored soon enough.’_

 

She doesn’t go away. She’s there more than ever now, even tries to move back in with him and Paddy. She’s there for him at the trial, there for him when he stands in that court room and tells everyone the truth. She’s there when he and Jackson start dating, and she’s pushy and overbearing in a way that drives him crazy, but she’s still _there._

 

She’s there when Jackson dies, and self-hatred seems to consume him. She’s there even when he tries his best to push her away, when he tries to crash that car and nearly kills her. 

 

She's there for him when she sees the cuts on his body that he put there himself. He sees fear and desperation in her eyes, and he doesn’t know what it all means. Later, she’s standing in the kitchen, holding a knife over her own arm, begging him to realise how she feels when he hurts himself, and he’s filled with fear. He realises, after things have calmed down and he’s had time to think, that it’s the first emotion he’s felt other than self-loathing and misery since Jackson’s death.

 

He realises how much the thought of her getting hurt terrifies him. He wonders when he started to need her so much. A part of him, one that still feels like that scared child from all those years ago, tells him that he needs to stop. He can’t depend on her. He’ll only get hurt in the end.

 

It’s not nearly as forceful as it used to be.

 

Time passes. Aaron meets Ed, and then Adam’s dad dies, and then his best mate, mad with grief, sets fire to the garage and nearly kills Cain. Aaron is filled with the need to _protect._ He takes the blame, flees Emmerdale, sees the lost expression on his mum’s face. She thinks he’s tried to kill her brother, and yet she’s still standing by him, still wants to protect him.

 

He’s going to miss her so much.

 

He comes back two years later, more sure of himself than he had been the last time he'd been here. He meets Robert, and his life becomes a huge mess of wonder, excitement, self-loathing and fear. He falls in love like he never has before, like he’d never _allowed_ himself to. 

 

Robert marries Chrissie. 

 

Katie dies.

 

Everything falls apart.

 

Mum finds out about Robert, and she’s furious. She slaps him. Aaron thinks, _‘This is it, she’s finally going to leave.’_

 

She doesn’t. She’s overbearing, and overprotective, and glares and threatens Robert any chance she gets, but she’s still there, and she’s still his _mum._ Most of the time he feels angry, hates that she’s interfering, but later on, after everything blows up and he wishes he’d never even met Robert Sugden, he feels grateful.

 

Robert gets shot, and Aaron is sure that his mum has done it. He hides the gun. All he wants to do is protect her, and he realises that it doesn’t matter if she is guilty or not — he’ll do anything to keep her safe.

 

He thinks back to the arrogant chavvy teenager he’d once been, and wonders what he would’ve done. He can barely remember, those feelings of loathing and disappointment he’d once felt towards his mum a distant memory. He doesn’t think he has a place in his thoughts anyway, not now that he’s risking everything to protect her.

 

Things get worse — _a lot_ worse — before they can even start to get better. He gets out of jail, and everything goes to hell. 

 

Diane is stabbed, and his mum’s responsible. She’s falling apart. It’s the shooting — of course it comes back to the shooting. His mum is struggling to deal with it all, and Aaron is terrified for her, terrified of what might happen. This is his fault. He and Robert had hurt so many people with their relationship, had dragged so many people into their mess, and they were still paying for their mistakes. He doesn’t want his mum to suffer. If this is his punishment, then it should be him facing the consequences, not her.

 

Mum is diagnosed with PTSD and she goes away for a while. She’s getting the help she needs, and that’s what’s important. Aaron will be there for her. He’ll support her, like she’s supported him over the past few years.

 

Maybe things will get better now.

 

(They don’t).

 

His dad comes back. He barges into the village, shattering whatever semblance of a life Aaron had built here. He starts cosying up to his family, to his _mum,_ and Aaron feels himself getting pushed out more and more by the man who had ruined everything. Everything is falling apart, and no one will listen. _Mum_ won’t listen. He feels like he’s a child again, and she’s turning her back on him, choosing someone else over him like he always knew she would. Only this time it isn't just anyone. It’s _him,_ the monster from his childhood, the man who had taken his childhood from him, and then continued to take more and more even after Aaron had left him.

 

He’ll leave. He’ll go far away, and then, maybe, none of it will matter anymore. Mum can stay here and be happy with him if she wants. She’d never believe him anyway.

 

Things don’t go to plan. He starts hurting himself, and Robert finds him, and somehow he finds himself blurting out his darkest secret to the man he’d promised himself he’d never trust again. And suddenly Robert is there for him, _supporting_ him, and Aaron doesn't know what to think. He can’t trust it, _won’t_ trust it, not after everything that’s happened. 

 

Aaron tries his best to push him away, and hates the part of him that wants him to stay — the part that’s afraid of being alone, that wants the comfort and support that Robert promises he’ll give, even though it terrifies him.

 

Robert says he should tell his mum. Aaron doesn’t think he can do that. Maybe she hates him now, maybe his dad has well and truly gotten to her, has turned her against him — but he still can’t say the words. If he tells her and she doesn’t believe him, then he doesn’t know what he’ll do. 

 

He remembers those feelings of disappointment, hurt and anger that he’d felt as a child, feelings he hadn’t felt in a long time when thinking about his mum. He doesn’t want to feel that way again. He doesn’t want her to abandon him. He doesn’t want to be alone.

 

She takes him to the beach, and he remembers being a child and being _happy_ , before all of that had been taken away from him. He remembers loving her. He remembers the years of anger and resentment, of thinking he’d never feel that way about her again. 

 

He loves her. He wants to trust her.

 

He tells her later that day, blurts out the words as she turns to walk upstairs, and feels terror nearly choke him as he realises what he’s said.

 

She turns to look at him, confused at first, and then horrified when she realises what he’s just told her. The words start pouring out, and the whole time he waits for the moment when she tells him she doesn't believe him, when she looks at him in disgust, or calls him a liar, or walks away back to his dad’s side.

 

She doesn’t do any of those things. Instead she listens to him, and holds him as he cries. She promises that she’s going to fix things, that she’s going to make everything better. Aaron feels like that little kid from all those years ago, the one who had cried and cried for his mum, only this time his cries had been answered, and she was here, protecting him and loving him.

 

She never doubts him, not for a second. Not then, and not throughout the hellish months that would follow. 

 

She stands by him, fights for him, and he knows he couldn’t have done it without her.

 

Aaron wonders when the woman he’d been so afraid of getting close to, the one he’d been so sure would only disappoint him in the end, had become one of the people he trusted and relied on the most.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I LOVE Aaron and Chas's relationship on the show, and I love seeing the way it's developed and changed over the years. When I started watching the show I started with the more current episodes, and eventually went back to the start of Aaron's storyline - and I was shocked at how different their relationship was back then. They've come such a long way.
> 
> This ended up being way longer than I initially thought it'd be haha. And I'm thinking of doing this with more character relationships on the show (because I absolutely love the journey some of the characters have experienced on the show). Anyway, hopefully you enjoy this!


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